GameFront » Modern Warfarehttp://www.gamefront.com
Read the latest gaming news, get game downloads, mods, patches, and watch game videos at Game Front.Wed, 20 May 2015 00:56:46 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1Game Front editors discuss what's going on in the world of video games. Topics often include: the latest news, game releases, controversies, predictions we make (that are often wrong), PC gaming stuff and beyond. Game on!Game FrontnoGame Frontpodcast@gamefront.compodcast@gamefront.com (Game Front)Game Front's weekly podcast covering all things gaming.video games, games, gaming, pc, pc gaming, console gaming, gamer, gamefront, game frontGameFront » Modern Warfarehttp://www.gamefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/gfpodcast-1400.jpghttp://www.gamefront.com
10 Shooters Every PC Gamer Must Playhttp://www.gamefront.com/10-shooters-every-pc-gamer-must-play/
http://www.gamefront.com/10-shooters-every-pc-gamer-must-play/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2011 01:19:13 +0000CJ Miozzihttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=121536Multiple FPS titles are churned out every year, but few of them are worth remembering. Why innovate when you can repeat the same, tired formula?

We pondered over the past two decades of FPS history and put together this list of 10 shooters that every PC gamer must play. Some of these games redefined the genre, while others relied solely on sheer quality, but they all have one thing in common: you must play them.

Earlier this week, the news broke that like most people his age, totally did it accused Norwegian terrorist shooter Anders Breivik is a gamer. Almost immediately the hand-wringing began, as news outlets began to dutifully speculate that somehow it wasn’t Breivik’s stated political views and terrorist goals, but (gasp!) video games that made him do it. This is absurd for all the reasons we laid out in our post on that topic, but it hasn’t stopped people from falling for this nonsense.

Now comes the sad, if inevitable news, that retailers in Norway are bowing to this hysteria. Norwegian news outlets are now reporting that retailer COOP Norway has taken violent video games off their shelves (WARNING: Hilarious Google Translation):

We have made our assessments of each department, and removed various games around, confirming product manager and please play responsibly in Albums, André Holt, said.

Persons charged with terrorist Anders Behring Breivik writes in his so-called manifesto that he was playing “World of Warcraft” for one year.

In the interests of the events Friday, Coop Norway revoked violent computer games and weapons like this indefinitely, says Geir Inge Stokke rogalandsavis.no .

- This is a temporary grip we do out of respect and in respect for those affected, said Stokke.

Frankly put, this is ridiculous and does far more disrespect to the survivors of this tragedy, because it assumes that they’re stupid people who cannot comprehend that terrorists don’t just come in ‘Islamic’ flavor. Taking games with violent content off the shelf won’t do anything except deprive a retailer of money. It certainly won’t stop future terrorist attacks, since the vast majority of gamers don’t commit murders.

It appears that COOP Norway is acting alone. Here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a trend. The last thing we need is a fake freak out to eclipse the conversation they should be having.

It only took a few days, but it finally happened. We have found a way to worry that video games are partly to blame for the horrific terrorist attack that devastated Norway last week. Thanks to the release of his manifesto, we now know that Anders Behring Breivik, suspected perpetrator of the attacks that killed 76 (and injured 96 more) likes Modern Warfare and the Dragon Age series. Some choice excerpts:

January 2010: “I just completed Dragon Age Origins not long ago. A brilliant game!

February 2010: I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. I played MW1 as well but I didn’t really like it as I’m generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person – Dragon Age Origins etc

April 2011: (The month Dragon Age II was released) “It was now April 25th and I was finally back to normal. I had spent the past couple of weeks playing through Dragon Age II and a couple of other newly released games. Awesome!

And with this new information, the inevitable worrying about the influence of violent media on real world events has begun.

When something unspeakably terrible happens, people grasp for any kind of explanation that makes sense of the situation. This is entirely understandable, since the vast majority of us do not sympathize with, nor even understand the mindset that turns someone into a murderer. This problem is worsened when the murderer looks and sounds like we do. Rather than address potentially explosive underlying problems that might contribute to someone going down that dark path, it’s easier to imagine that they’re insane, a ‘madman’, an unstable mind unhinged by external stimuli. Such was the case in our own country in the wake of the horrible 1995 Oklahoma City Bombings, or more notoriously, in the aftermath of the tragic Columbine murders of 1999.

The Columbine shooters were popularly believed to have been influenced by violent movies and controversial music. The immediate result was a moral panic that led to a kind of self-censorship in the media, and to renewed calls to limit access to constitutionally protected forms of artistic expression. But while blaming Marilyn Manson or The Matrix might have provided an easy answer for traumatized parents and a shocked nation, it did nothing to make us actually understand what happened. Unfortunately, with the news that, like more than half of all adults, Anders Breivik is a gamer, we appear to be going down the same road.

One notable example is The Post-Chronicle, which has breathlessly reported the news of Breivik’s gaming in tones similar to the release of the Pentagon Papers. They ask, quite seriously, “was he directly influenced by the video game “Dragon Age 2″?” and go on to explain how the story arc of Dragon Age’s Anders compares to that of Anders Breivik. The article then claims that this is “quite possibly the saddest moment in video game history”. How the history of the video gaming industry is itself tarnished by the actions of a violent criminal is unclear, but it’s certainly one of the saddest moments in journalism history.

One might suggest that liking some of the most popular media of recent times is the least unusual thing about Breivik. His enjoyment of them demonstrates not that such games will cause violent behavior, but that they are part of our shared cultural heritage linking all of us, sinner and saint alike. Furthermore, Breivik’s manifesto weighs in at 1,516 pages, in which only a tiny number of references to video games are actually made. One might as well argue that access to a computer and word processing software had more of an influence on his behavior, and start wondering if his decision to write in English instead of Norwegian reveals a dangerous obsession with irregular grammar.

Based on what Breivik actually wrote in his convoluted but surprisingly lucid manifesto, the evidence seems fairly clear-cut that he is a disaffected, racist extremist with ties to ultra-nationalist groups. He describes in detail his opposition to immigration, to ‘multiculturalism’, to ‘political correctness’, Marxism, and to numerous other such targets. After his arrest, it’s been reported that he has claimed to be part of a larger team containing two separate cells. Though the truth will eventually come out, the obvious (and disturbing) conclusion is not that he has been unhinged by video games, but that he committed his heinous crimes in order to advance his political goals. In other words, he is the dictionary definition of a terrorist.

Our hearts and thoughts must be with the victims of this terrible tragedy, and with the nation struggling to collect itself under what must be intense pressure to do something, anything, about it. And it would be a disservice to those victims and their loved ones to begin looking for easy answers that obscure the actual problem at hand. Video games did not turn this man into a terrorist. Bigotry, hate, xenophobia did. We can’t combat those problems if we’re more worried about access to popular entertainment. So please, enjoy your copy of Dragon Age 2 guilt-free, and take a moment to be thankful that you haven’t had to endure this kind of tragedy in your own life.